Hillary Clinton Meets the Capps

This audio-visual resource is organized as a hyper text, with multiple layers, and a number of video and audio clips next to transcripts. The idea is to introduce students to two main ideas: (1) greetings are (like other types of routine activities) are complex interactions with their own social organization and (2) the way in which we represent interaction, e.g. our transcripts, may or may not allow us to identify or some of its properties, i.e. some of what is going on. In this case, you have access to a few short clips taken from Duranti's video ethnography of Walter Capps' 95-96 campaign for the US Congress. In the first clip - where Hillary Clinton meets members of the Capps family during a visit at Santa Barbara Community College in September 1996 --, there are three examples of greetings.

One greeting is at the beginning (1), one in the middle (2), and one at the end (3) of this brief sequence. Each example is related to but different from the other three. Each example illuminates certain aspects of the occasion and raises a number of analytical challenges. After viewing the video clip (you will need RealPlayer to view it, scroll down to see the link that will allow you to download the most recent free version of the program) click on the number next to one of the three portions of the transcript to go into an analysis of that part of the encounter.